When discussing the concept of making money online, many are quick to point out blogging. It’s really simple, right? You think of a domain name, register it, setup hosting, get a theme, write some articles, network a little, put up Adsense, and the money flows in. Well not exactly. From start to finish, this process can easily take a full year just to begin shaping up.

Today we’re going to discuss 3 ways to make money from blogging without actually blogging. Let’s look at the good and the bad involved in these 3 ways to earn money online from blogging without actually blogging:

Freelance writing.

This involves writing blog posts for already established blogs. You either take the time to contact established bloggers or they find you through seeing your quality work around the web.

The good:

Blog is already setup. You won’t have to worry about setting about or building a blog. You’ll be writing articles for a blog that’s already well established and set up.Easy to start. Anyone can start writing articles. You will need the essential writing skills. Once you prove that you can write, you can start making money writing articles for established bloggers.Results depend on effort. There really isn’t that much luck involved in this process. If you don’t offer high quality articles, then you won’t land the juicy gigs. If you put the time in it will show. If not, then you simply won’t make any money from freelance writing.

The bad:

Difficult to gain momentum. It’s extremely challenging to get your name out there. The reason for this is that we live in an era of super cheap and even free articles.Finding clients. As mentioned above, there’s plenty of low-cost sources for articles these days. The most challenging aspect is finding clients that are willing to pay for your services.

Productizing.

This process is all about creating a product to sell for the readers of a blog. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your own blog. You could create a product for your own blog or the blog of someone else.

Pros:

Extremely scalable. A digital product is very scalable. You create the product once and then your attention turns to marketing this product. Once you create the product it becomes really easy to scale it. Your energy needs to shift towards selling numerous copies of the same product.

Earn money while you sleep. Once you setup the whole process (website along with payment system), the rest becomes pretty hands-off. If you market your product well, you could earn money while you sleep.

Cons:

Income is very uncertain. You never know how much you could make (or lose) from the release of a new product. Just because you have a lot of subscribers it doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed to sell an exorbitant amount of eBooks.

Difficult to market your product. There’s just a plethora of products available out there. What makes yours so special? How are you going to impress people enough to purchase your product?

Payment setup. The payment process is a pain to get going. You must figure out how you will accept payments, pay affiliates, and claim everything on your taxes. This is enough to turn most people off.

Design work.

This is the behind the scenes work that most bloggers don’t want to deal with. It could involve; designing blogs, back end coding on a blog, creating logos, or any other design/technical work on a blog.

Advantages:

Apply your rare skills. Many of us are simply horrible at “artistic” stuff. I could not put a blog logo together if my life depended on it. This is why I love it when I meet a designer that will simply ask me a few questions and then put together a awesome logo for me.

Disadvantages:

Collecting payment. Figuring out how you will collect payments and charge clients could be one of the most difficult aspects of this endeavor.

Modifications. When working with a client on a blog design or a blog logo, you might have to make many modifications/changes. This involves a high degree of interaction with the blogger. Are you ready for this hands-on work?

At the conclusion of this article, have you tried any of these methods to make money from blogging? If so, how has it turned out?

Comments

I do freelance writting. In fact, I was already doing freelance writting before I had my own blog :-). I kinda like it, and also the fact that I do it when I have time to do it… no boss to seek over my shoulder, etc.

I do not have the knowledge to desing or program websites. I know some coding stuff, but not enough to say that I know how to code stuff ;-)…

I also decided to write another blog… 😉 where I try to help people with some struggles that I have some knowledge in (and also, I confess… to improve my English writting skills).

And I plan to win the lottery 😀 so I’ll have plenty of time to manage all my emerging projects!!!

Selling things online is definitely the way to go. Just avoid using ebay with all its hidden fees. I opted for Main Street Fair (www.mainstreetfair.com), an online auctions and free classified ads site that offers some of the lowest listing fees online. Find a site that works for you and go for it!

[…] Mike asked me to go into detail on the 3 different strategies I covered for making money online without blogging, I immediately wrote about freelance writing. Why? Because freelance writing was the only one that […]

[…] your own blog? Will you write freelance articles? Will you work for another site? There are many ways to make money online, you just need to figure out which route you will take. The good news is that there’s a […]